April 2006

Thursday, April 27, 2006

I always like reading these when other bloggers do them, though I confess I lose focus after maybe 30 or so. Let's hope I can pay attention long enough to finish my own 100 things. Let's go.

1. I am thirty-something, and not happy about it.

2. I married my high school sweetheart, and I think that might be one of the most defining things about me.

3. I can summarize any Little House episode if you show me just 5 seconds worth.

4. I was a bookworm before I had kids.

5. I used to feel smug when people told me they didn't have time to read. Now I can't believe how much time I used to have to myself and that I never even appreciated it.

6. I went to high school in Alabama, where I met my husband. Neither of our families are really from Alabama. Nor do either of them live there anymore.

7. I've never had a dog, just cats.

8. I have two kids.

9. I got kicked out of a bar once, which is a fun fact to remember.

10. In college, we used to go dumpster diving behind the dunkin donuts while humming the tune to Mission Impossible.

11. I hate shopping for clothes, so I never have anything decent to wear.

12. I prefer to spend on food and books.

13. I am sitting in a beachfront hotel staring at the ocean while I type this list.

14. I was born in New England.

15. I graduated from Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia.

16. My husband flies helicopters.

17. I have two sisters.

18. For some strange reason, virtually none of my girlfriends have had sisters.

19. I like peanut butter and cheese on hamburgers.

20. I am a coffee drinker. With milk and sugar.

21. I've noticed my favorite breakfast cereals are all square.

22. There was a time in my life when I wished I lived in an L.M. Montgomery novel.

23. I lean to the right. (Politically, I mean.)

24. I'm pro-life.

25. I love dark, dark chocolate.

26. I love San Diego.

27. I support breastfeeding, extended nursing, and nursing in public.

28. I use cloth diapers.

29. I love and admire my parents, and hope to raise my kids as well as they raised us.

30. Apple pie is the only dessert that can tempt me away from chocolate.

31. I am a night owl. (Yawn.)

32. Does it go without saying, then, that I am not a morning person?

33. I like stawberry jam best. Not preserves, not jelly. Jam.

34. I was a girlscout for 7 years. Plus one year as a brownie leader.

35. I love brownies. The baked kind. With nuts.

36. I used to like to run. I wish I had more opportunity to go running. I don't think I'd like a jogging stroller, though. I prefer to totally zone out when I run, and I can't zone out while I am with my kid.

37. My first car was a hatchback I shared with my sister. My dad paid like $700 for it, it was hideous, and we named it Vera. It had blue shag seat covers, and it listed to the left. The front doors would stick and we had to climb in like the Dukes of Hazzard.

38. I have big feet. I love Dolly Parton's line in Steel Magnolia's "I wear a 6, but a 7 feels so good, I buy an 8."

39. I love all Meg Ryan romantic comedies, but she was a little sullied to me after the whole Russel Crowe thing.

40. I think Ed Harris is really sexy.

41. Brad Pitt was never my type.

42. I spent a week in France once, when I met my husband's boat in port. What a great time.

43. I absolutely hate The Bachelor. What a horrible idea. Have those women no pride?

44. I love The Apprentice.

45. I love to sing, but I am not really good enough to have other people hear me.

46. I wish I could play guitar.

47. My younger sister ended up marrying her first guitar instructor.

48. I am Catholic.

49. I believe in natural childbirth.

50. I lost a baby girl to a fatal birth defect. I just feel like it's something people should know about me, because it is a major influence in my life. But it's not something you can just mention in passing very easily.

51. I suffer from sciatica sometimes, especially third trimester.

52. I highly recommend temperpedic mattresses.

53. I come a big French Canadian family. I have 21 first cousins. I only know a few of them well.

54. I love brie. But I hate goat cheese.

55. I was on the Algebra Math team in 8th grade. But I never liked math.

56. In 7th grade, I got the Home Ec Award a the annual school awards ceremony.

57. I am very upset that Petite Sophisticate closed.

58. I vascillate between letting my hair grow long, and vowing I will keep it short.

59. I love sushi.

60. I've been to the movies twice in three years.

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Awhile ago I began my 100 things, only to lose focus after the first 60. Turns out, it is really hard to think of that many things to say about myself! Here's the worst part--I took all day to type this post, to fill out the last 40 items, and when I finally finished, when I clicked SAVE . . . my network connection had timed out, I got the "Page not found" page, and my post was gone! Argh! My cry of despair scared my baby and made her cry. I don't want to try to do it again! Aww, but now I have to . . .

61. I have no memory of most of what I listed here earlier today.

62. I am afraid of the dark.

63. I like beer, but it has to be good beer, like a good red ale, or a wheat ale.

64. I love The Gilmore Girls.

65. I love board games, especially Trivial Pursuit.

66. I don't highlight my hair because I can't keep them up. I only go to a salon twice a year.

67. I think milkshakes are the perfect cure for heartburn. Especially when you're pregnant.

68. I've been pregnant three times, and I'm still carrying around some milkshake.

69. My milkshake doesn't really bring all the boys to the yard.

70. I love my DVR. In California, all my friends who had it told me it would change my life, and I laughed. But it has! I can watch less late-night mindless crap, and more Gilmore Girls!

71. We visited several National Parks this summer, and my favorites were Yosemite and the Grand Tetons.

72. My husband got a souvenir tshirt at the Grand Tetons. I did not.

73. I can spell souvenir because I took French for 4 years.

74. I am generally good at spelling. In Cranium, I always get the backwards spelling questions ("gnilleps") right.

75. I enjoyed diagramming sentences in sixth grade.

76. I was an English major in college.

77. I guess you could say I was a little nerdy in high school. (If by "nerdy" you mean "smarter" and "more mature." :-p)

78. I took violin lessons for two years when I was kid. I quit right after my parents bought me my own violin.

79. I will make all my children take some kind of music lessons.

80. I never played a sport, but I took dance lessons, and I twirled flags with the marching band. I was captain, in fact.

81. I love autumn. My favorite season used to be spring, but when we lived in Florida, it was so nice to look forward to cooler weather. And then my husbands first deployment had him returning in autumn. And both my children were born in the fall. Pumpkin patches and chrysanthemums. School supplies and drumlines. I love it all.

82. I hate cleaning the kitchen more than any other household chore. If it just didn't have to be done every single day!

88. I love Miss Manner's books, I think they are fascinating and amusingly witty.

89. I let my kids watch too much TV, and I feel guilty about it. But I get all bent out of shape if my husband tells me that I let the kids watch too much TV.

90. I have the ungracious habit of always correcting my husband when he's wrong. And he has a compulsive need to correct me, too. I hate that we do this. I'd bet our family does too.

91. I love my in-laws. They are such a fun and loving family.

92. My husband and I have been married for almost 10 years, together for almost 17, and I am still totally in love with him, I miss him when I am not with him, and he lights up the room when he walks in. (He also instantly makes it messy.)

93. The above gushiness might be due to the fact that my husband is out of the country for some pre-deployment training.

94. When he called on his second night away, I asked him, "So, is your heart growing fonder yet?"

Friday, April 21, 2006

Tomorrow morning I am returning for the second time this month to Virgina. Since my Navy husband has orders to Norfolk, we flew out two weeks ago to house hunt. Four exhausting days later, we wrote up an offer for the one we'd felt most at home in, then piled the kids back in the car to dash back to the airport for our 6 hour plane ride home. (How fun is it, you ask, to sit in an airplane seat for 6 straight hours with a 3 year old and an infant? Only mildly more fun than riding all over greater Virginia Beach with our agent touring homes with a fussy, nursing baby.)

So tomorrow morning my helpful, loving husband will deliver my children and I to the San Diego airport for a 6:30 AM flight, sans said husband, back to Norfolk. Wait, no! Not directly to Norfolk, no, we fly into Dulles, where I disembark with my children, collect luggage, locate and pile into a rental car, and drive 4 hours to Virgina Beach. Because it was cheaper this way. (How much cheaper, you ask? I really don't want to know. I am afraid to ask, in case the answer is something like $40, and then I will want to do something bad to my husband, something that is NOT congratulating him on his thriftiness.)

We're returning to Virginia to attend our good friends' wedding (my husband is best man) and also to close on the house. I would also like to get some things started at the house, like new flooring and painting. In fact, I am looking forward to just SEEING the house again. I have only a vague memory of what the kitchen and master bath looked like, and I don't even remember seeing the second upstairs bath. After so many houses, it was kind of a blur. Yes, I brought my camera so I could take pictures of the houses we liked best. The camera stayed in my bag in the car the whole time, because my arms were occupied with the baby, of course.

So it will be a fun trip. Lest I sound too complainy, we are staying at a beach resort, and my mom is going to help me out and meet me at the airport, and drive to Virginia Beach with us. So we got that going for us. Which is nice. Now I just have to finish cleaning the house, the unsold house, here, so it can be shown to imaginary prospective buyers while we are gone. And then I have to pack. Again. Lucky for me the suitcase is still on the floor on the upstairs landing, as I never really unpacked since our last trip.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Our home is officially on the market, we have MLS printouts hanging from our front door, and I don't know how on earth I will manage to live ten minutes from clean until we find a buyer.

That's what we had our agent note on the listing, that we just need ten minutes notice to show the place. I live in fear of the doorbell ringing while I am in my PJ's, my preschooler is naked, and the baby is mid-diaper change. Ok, so the odds of being caught exactly at a moment like that are not that great (although greater than you might think, if you only knew how often that is exactly the situation over here.) But there are other times I would be just as unprepared.

What if I am cooking dinner, the baby is napping, and Jimmy is on the potty? Or if I am on the phone, the baby is crying, and Jimmy pants are wet? (Can you tell that we still have big potty issues over here?)

I am not normally a slob, exactly (though back in my college days, my roommate Barbra would have disagreed). But I am a little messy. Add to that a husband who is a lot messy, and who has an aversion to putting anything away when he is finished with it, and our home gets a lot more like two hours from clean.

My husband had this grand plan to sell our home in 5 days. He saw a segment on CNN about a book called--you guessed it-- How to Sell Your Home in 5 Days. You advertise that you will sell your house to the best bidder on a Sunday night, and put up signs everywhere advertising an enticingly low suggested starting bid. You set yourself a reasonable reserve price, and then hold a two day open house, culminating in a bidding frenzy.

Our open house went well, and the bidding was real, though less than frenzied. In the end, the best bidder was slightly under our reserve price, and seemed unable to come up with financing. It was a nice try, though.

Now we are listed with an agent, and the price we want is much higher because the agent must be paid, naturally. We are also in contract negotiations on a home in Virginia. So I guess this moving thing is really going to happen. At least I am so busy picking up after myself and my kids that I don't have much time to be sad about leaving.